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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22549543">Grey Area</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetiicdissonance/pseuds/Poetiicdissonance'>Poetiicdissonance</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dark Matter Stretching Between Stars [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bad Decisions, Character Study, During Canon, Force-Sensitive Armitage Hux, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Morning After, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Synesthesia, it might be the force, it might just be</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:53:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,441</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22549543</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetiicdissonance/pseuds/Poetiicdissonance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Loyalty is easy when you never see anything else. Hux had been raised to know that the Republic was corrupt, and that the world was best in crisp, grey lines. (Words did not have colours, and he'd learned young to ignore them).  </p><p>He had known that, but it hadn't stopped him from falling into bed with Poe Dameron, even a decade later, or letting the colours spill over the harshly imposed lines he'd drawn.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dark Matter Stretching Between Stars [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630951</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Grey Area</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! I'm sure you all saw the tags, so like, at any rate Hux's neural pathways are a mess. Look at him go, words have colours.</p><p>Some fun facts about this:<br/>1: I wrote half of it before watching TLJ, and half of it after, but all before TRoS, so anything with Pryde is entirely based off of headcanon, and the theories that happened before TRoS.<br/>2: this was originally two ideas, and a drabble that came later. Now it’s this *flaps hands at work*. I swear it was never meant to get this long.<br/>3: I started shipping Maratelle and Hux’s mother during the course of writing this. They were only meant to be like... a line at max, I swear.</p><p>Now onto the fic, or... the story of how Poe Dameron and Armitage Hux make Bad™ Decisions.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hux docked in the spaceport, one of the many scattered along the edges of the outer-rim, and the mid-rim. It was familiar, like they all were; a cesspit of gambling and sin, a myriad of creatures of various moralities mingling together. Ever changing, but always the same. He rolled his shoulders, stretching out the muscles that had begun to cramp during the long flight from the Finalizer; the nondescript transport ship left between what he assumed, were two smuggler ones. </p><p>Armitage turned away from the console, disembarking after throwing on a leather jacket instead of the familiar greatcoat, hiding his First Order allegiance, and made his way to a bar that had never heard of fine liquor. Where anything they marketed as such was just in a fancy bottle, marked up for the people that wanted to feel better about themselves. After all, chances were anyone who came here wasn’t there for the alcohol. He doubted many, if any had ever had the truth of what they were marketing as expensive. </p><p>The bar was rowdy in the same way all bars were, and he sat, nursing a cheap beer as he waited for Poe. The room was bathed in shades of grey and yellow amber; apathy and cheap alcohol, the sort of colours that places for the derelict seemed to be tainted by, some impenetrable fog of empty survival. He had spent a lifetime cataloguing the world by colour. Words, feelings, memories, all of them had a specific shade, and the background hum of the seedy bar was identical to all the other ones that Armitage had visited.</p><p>Across the table from him, a man thumped down, his own rebel symbol carefully replaced with plain clothes. “Now what’s someone so pretty as you doing here?”</p><p>These meetings followed the same pattern, and Armitage wanted to feel guilty for betraying the Order like this; by willingly falling into bed with one of their greatest enemies, and yet, yet here he was, again, and again, and again. (They’d been at it since before the war was here, when Poe had still fought for the Republic, and he had been nothing but the bastard son with an Imperial name).</p><p>Armitage raised the glass, a light smile playing on his features, the script playing out easily between them. “Dining like the Emperor.”</p>
<hr/><p>“This was a mistake.” Armitage says hours later when they’re both sitting on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other. The lights from the nearby star, and the stations manufactured light filtered in through the grimy transparisteel window. Neither one of them quite yet ready to be the first one to leave. It reminded him of the sort of scene that would be painted by a starving Coruscant artist betrayed by a lover, not that any artist would want to paint them. They weren’t lovers after all. (Never turn your back on the enemy, not even for a moment. And they were enemies, if they weren’t, there would be no qualms about this betrayal). </p><p>“I can’t do this again.” Poe adds, and they both know that regardless of what either of them say, they’ll leave, and pretend it’s the last time. Poe will go back to being the golden pilot for the Resistance, and Armitage will return to the First Order to be the loyal general. These meetings were not their lives, or their allegiances… they were meant for pleasure and that was <i>all.</i></p><p>It would be nice-- no not nice, that was far too kind a word for it, comforting perhaps, to be back in familiar surroundings. With the Order, he knew his place, and the colours, and nothing got past his defences. This was a weakness. Armitage took a deep breath and opened the door.</p><p>“Goodbye Dameron.” And just like that, the mask was back in place.</p>
<hr/><p>The Finalizer had always had a glossy, sleek appearance to it, the ship and the word both were both things of neat, straight lines. It operated with the clean efficiency he expected of it and the crew. The word was a perfect reflection of that, even with Ren on board. </p><p>There was nothing pristine to Ren. His name was the sort of thing created by a child with an overactive imagination. ‘Kylo’ had never been anything but a roiling mass of maroon with a single streak of blue dwarf light. (Some days the colours were more distinct from one another, and others it might as well have been black). ‘Ren’ was harder to define. It dripped in dark plums, mixed with reds. A name of blood, and of mystique. (It wasn’t a name, but a title, and it bled with blood, blood, blood). His experience with the other Knights of Ren had been limited, but in the flashes he knew, they all seemed to bleed the same.</p><p>Hux closes his eyes for a split second, pulling together his thoughts before he did something rash in front of the crew. Ren was a nuisance, but he was a nuisance with (however begrudged) <i>equal</i> control of<i> his</i> ship. He was impulsive, quick to anger, and thought that he was within his rights to order around the stormtroopers and officers. (Don’t question the will of the Supreme Leader, there is a plan, you must simply survive it, he reminded himself).</p><p>Hux returned his attention to the other man. “Lord Ren,” he started, and noticed with some pride that the bridge officers averted their eyes. “We can’t spare anyone to your,” he held himself back from saying whims, not keen to have to take a trip to the medbay. Starkiller was nearly complete, and it wouldn’t do to have Ren taking his officers and stormtroopers to go chasing after a map with Skywalker’s <i>possible</i> whereabouts. “Quest for the map. We need them here, to finish the construction on Starkiller Base.”</p><p>He had put too much of himself into this to have Kylo Ren of all people destroy it.</p>
<hr/><p>It’s later, after Starkiller, and the Hosnian system, and everything in between that Hux- Armitage disembarks on the backwater planet. It was small, with no notable resources and neither the Resistance or the First Order had seen it useful enough to lay claim, so the planet was neutral, home of smugglers and disreptables. (And to people like them having their clandestine meetings beyond the prying ears of the war, and oh, how the war listened).</p><p>The bar was dark-- warm with the press of bodies, and the sounds of people. He caught the occasional word, and in among the grey of the room, there were moments of colour: burgundy, amber, turquoise. Anger, and jealousy, and victory, muddled together in quickly disappearing streaks as a new wave of apathy settled.</p><p>His own name was a study in contradictions. ‘Hux’ was a red word-- hard and jagged, the thing he shared with his father. Sharp edged and bladed, the name oozed the same colours of the blood that he had spilled. He said it with the feeling of forcing out shattered glass, like if he wasn’t careful it might cut his throat. He’s almost sure it already has, he’d just learned to talk around the slowly riveting blood in his mouth.</p><p>‘Armitage’ wasn’t a bold name at all. It was a faded out teal, like the oceans of Arkanis had always been. The same sad blue that had become his childhood, and it’s memories. With syllables that were thick and syrupy in his mouth, rolling around and sticking to each crevice and indent, flowing past the lump in his throat. (His mother had given it to him, and it had always been like her- soft and blue, and built for a kinder world. He wasn’t sure if the lump in his throat was because of the name, or because of the memories. He was even less certain he wanted to know).</p><p>And then there was Poe... with his short, breathy syllable, who seemed to glow in shades of yellow and red and orange. The joyous colours of fire and everything that burned. (It was not the colour of Starkiller when it fired. It was not the colour of the sky when the planet broke apart under his feet). It was the colour of the faded memories he had the fire in the kitchens before his mother had died, and before his father had taken him. It was a warm colour-- life and love, and a novelty in the dark, cold colours of the Order</p><p>Dameron was green, a deep royal green, like leaves and forests were (it was what Starkiller would have looked like had the snow melted, but it didn’t. It had only crumbled in a cold, cold, red). The name was dense, like ‘Armitage’, with vowel sounds that clung to his mouth even as he cursed it and the man that owned it. (It wasn’t like Hux, jagged and painful to everyone, even the man that owned it). The colour was starkly different to his mother’s but that had never stopped him from seeing the similarities, indelibly tied together. The familiar, comforting colours the only reprieve in his life, in the otherwise monochrome silver, white’s and black’s.</p><p>He looked up with a smile when the man in question sat down across from him with a grin. “Now then, you don’t look like the sort that belongs here.”</p><p>Armitage looked away from his distant gaze of the bar with a slow grin. “Are you offering to take me out?”</p><p>“With a blaster or on a date?”</p><p>“Surprise me.”  (A blaster might hurt less in the long run, a still-sensible part of him thinks, and Armitage ignores it).</p><p>Poe laughs, and the moment’s gone.</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning dawned beautiful, the sun rising and turning the sky teal. (It would fade to lilac, but for now it had the same colour as clear summer days on Arkanis). Armitage stood staring out the window, shirt hanging off his shoulders, unbuttoned as he picked out the movements of the world outside beginning to move. The room was silent, both of them in contemplation.</p><p>“How could you?” Poe asked, tilting to look at his bed partner curiously (with just a hint of anger, Armitage noted unsurprised).</p><p>“Do what?” Armitage asked, snapped out of his reverie, switching his focus back to the man in bed. </p><p>“Starkiller. All that death… I saw it when it exploded, it made a big boom. Beautiful red.”</p><p>“Purple, lilac,” Armitage corrected absentmindedly. “It’s lilac.”</p><p>The room descended into silence, as Poe turned to stare. “It’s lilac...?” he questioned. Armitage hummed, remembering it in the minute shades. Starkiller had always been a bizarre colour, too much a combination of himself mixed together. (It was a product of himself and that made it purple like everything he made seemed to be tinted with). </p><p>“The name: Starkiller. It’s a purple word.”</p><p>He noticed that Poe still looked confused, and he remembered his Father’s voice <i>“Armitage, don’t be ridiculous. Such fanciful notions are unbecoming.” </i>Words didn’t have colours, they were simply words. Knowing that had never stopped the colours though, and all it had done was taught him not to get distracted by them, or to ever let anyone know. A lifetime of fighting them hadn’t made them any less present, it was just a misplaced attempt to think that he’d never slip and let Poe know.</p><p>A few seconds passed in an awkward silence. “It doesn't matter,” Armitage said, fingers flying to do up the shirt buttons. He’d shown his cards and it was time to go. He couldn’t get comfortable. This wasn’t… it couldn’t be permanent, but telling Poe about the colours had made it important, and that thought scared him more than he wanted to admit. If he left now, he could still pretend nothing had changed.</p><p> “Hey, Hugs, <i>wait, <b>wait.</b></i> What do you mean?”</p><p>He looked up at the pilots face, and sighed, hands falling away from the mostly done buttons. He knew now, it wasn’t like hiding it would do any more good, just cause more questions eventually. “Words have colours, you’re…” he said, trying to consider how to explain the existence of Poe Dameron in colour. “‘Poe’ is almost the colour of your atrocious flight suit, but tinted red and yellow.” Like fire, like rebirth and warmth, he didn't say. Some things deserved to stay silent, and this was one of them.</p><p>“Damerone’s green.” he added, turning away from the pilot to look back at the sky, the shifting colours illuminating the clouds. It might have looked romantic in a different light, or in a different world. </p><p>“Nice, what about you?”</p><p>“Washed out,” Armitage responds, as he turns to leave, with the sort of quiet speed that came from feeling bared, and stripped to the skin. The lie was easier to give than an explanation. Shirt buttoned, a small stack of credit chips left behind. It was only fair, Poe had paid last time, and it wasn’t like he could stay. He always left first, and this time was no different. It was easier than the truth, if he left, he could pretend that something hasn't shifted here. </p><p>It’s not love, Armitage tells himself, it’s not even vague affection, he corrects, halfway out the door, and half a step to his ship. (He shouldn’t feel so used, his entire life he’s been used, he should be used to it. (Subnote: categorization of used; red, pink, magenta- the colour of shame and burning. The academy years in a single word).</p>
<hr/><p>It wasn’t quite true. The academy had come with a long slew of cold colours in a myriad of greens and greys, with enough hatred and pain in shades of red to give the memories a tinge of pink. Most of his life had come in sad, washed out colours, a reflection of the old Imperial holovideos the First Order had been built on, and taught with. It was nothing like the men that had built it, at least, not entirely. They had all eventually become the same, but Brendol’s name had always remained the shifting edges of bronze and purple, the colours of warriors, and of kings. As much as Hux despised his father the colours had been the creation of a scared child, and they had never changed.</p><p>There are moments when he thinks that in another life the world would be different, and the colours wouldn’t be so sickly. Perhaps, had something gone differently, the colours would be breathtaking, and not some shameful fracture in his facade. Maybe then he could believe Dameron’s loyalty to the Resistance’s cling to hope. ‘Hope’ was a bitter, aniseed word, molted purples if it rotted on his tongue as he spoke. Like with each passing moment he would fall into something far worse than whatever rotting spikes ‘hope’ supported. No, hope was a dark word. A cold purple like poison berries, and night flowers.</p><p>It was deceptive, a royal colour in shades of death and misfortune. Few words were as bad as ‘hope’. ‘Force’ was, in it’s ever mutating bruises, the sickly yellows and greens ringed in a shifting rainbow of tender pain. At least ‘force’ was only the memory of pain. The ‘Republic’ dug into his tongue and mouth like blades. Each tattered syllable ripped from his mouth like the tips of a crown, dragging and swooping in the same fine golden arches.</p><p>Perhaps he should have known that the gold would always be harmful, masqueraded as a saviour. Dameron certainly thought that the Republic was a nobler choice. (What was the whole war other than monstrous creations fighting for their idea of perfection?) He might not have believed in what Dameron was fighting for, but he was certain that the pilot was convinced of the inherent goodness of his fight. (And of the evil inhumanity of the First Order).</p>
<hr/><p>He was going to die. Kylo Ren, the <i>Supreme Leader</i>, was going to kill him in some childish fit of rage and everything he had worked and fought for would go up in a plume of bruise colored smoke. He understood that Ren hated him, the feeling was returned, but this was absurd. He disagreed with Hux on principle most of the time, and Hux knew, the whole kriffing Order knew that he was the one to have killed Supreme Leader Snoke. His excuse that it was the scavenger was less believable than the idea that the leader of the Knights of Ren would commit treason.</p><p>Life under Snoke hadn't been good, but it had been better. They were allowed to wage this war in the way it deserved, not in some misguided attempt to force the world to forget that Kylo Ren had once been Ben Solo. Snoke had been an ever-present figure, but he was distant in the way that Ren was not. He stalked the halls of the Finalizer, and almost all of the officers and most of the other personnel had spent time in the  medbay because of the force choke that Ren seemed so fond of. </p><p>And there was nothing he could do. He’d had no greater power when Ren had only been<i> equal </i>with him. Mutiny was hardly the acceptable solution, but there were times, Hux thought, when it would be better than the alternative. He should have shot him when he had the chance, but the window of opportunity had closed, and now he was suffering the consequences of his inaction.</p>
<hr/><p>He knew that Dameron was the Resistance’s best pilot. It was in his file, and it shouldn’t have surprised Hux, but still. The dangling moment of information about his mother had been enough to rattle him for the rest of that day, and even now, he thought, staring blankly at the ceiling, hands resting on his stomach, Poe half a foot away, he wanted to ask if any of it had been true-- if the ploy to buy time had any truth in it.</p><p>He had very few memories of his mother; a few feelings, a colour or two. He knows her name (his father spent enough of his early life cursing the woman for ruining his life). Eloise-- a green word, light, edging on teal, like the shallow lakes and rivers of Arkanis (like a cross between Dameron’s and home). He thinks sometimes, that he must still look like her, bird-boned and willowy, with the sort of grace that his father had despised, and tried, desperately, to beat out of him with no avail. (She’d always been beautiful in his eyes; her high cheekbones, and straight red hair she’d kept up in a no-nonsense bun, and a smile that had made the chaos of his earliest years bearable).</p><p>He certainly didn’t look like Brendol, and even if he did look like Eloise, so many years had come and gone that he wasn’t sure if he still did-- would have, he supposed. Just because he remembered her that way… Brendol had always made sure to teach him that there was no value in a loving nostalgia. There’s a difference between love and being in love, he knows. He loved his mother, he liked to think. But he loved her like most children loved their parents— unconditionally, and without fail. But then she was gone, and now, nearly thirty years later, he still finds himself thinking about her.</p><p>(Not if she would be proud of what he’d done, and what he’d become. He knows well enough that she wouldn’t be. <i>Couldn’t</i> be).</p><p>In the same thought, he’d loved Phasma, he was certain, even if  he hadn’t been<i> in</i> love with her, but even she was gone now. He <i>couldn’t</i> be in love with Poe. This wasn’t a relationship, it was sex, stringless and meaningless.</p><p>He leaves without a word, thoughts still swirling. There’s nothing to say; they both know what’s going to happen next, and that no matter how badly they want to think differently, they’ll end up back here, it was easier to slip out when Poe was still asleep.</p>
<hr/><p>Pryde (or pride, it was all the same in the end, wasn’t it?) is a purple word too. Too different to be like so many people in the Order with the crimson reds and blacks, but too familiar to be a comfort. The man was a combination of ‘hope’ and all his faults in a single person. A constant reminder of how there was always too much of himself in Starkiller. There was always too much of his tainted idealism in it-- a watermark of his failure.</p><p>The name is like a brick weighing down his tongue, held down with the intent of something bigger. And Hux knows that whatever it is, it’s going to kill him, though he thinks Dameron won’t survive the war either. They were both born into the fighting, and he’ll go out a hero, of that, Hux is certain.  A blaze of jubilant glory in the big, final battle because neither of them would ever know how to survive in the world otherwise.</p><p>If he’s lucky, Hux thinks, it might not be Ren to kill him. If he’s less lucky, he thinks it might be Pryde. (In the best version of events, he’ll go out doing the right thing and make his mother proud, but this isn’t and had never been the best version of events). </p><p>He stands staring out of the viewport of his quarters, and part of Hux suspects that his days are growing ever numbered. The Resistance had found support from all corners of the galaxy, after the disaster at Crait. Kylo Ren had doomed them all in some anger towards his parents, and a desire to pursue some petty vendetta. </p><p>He could run now, steal a ship and survive the war for just a little longer. It would be the coward’s move, but he thought, it would mean abandoning almost everything he had held dear. (It would mean leaving the twisted arrangement he and Dameron had, and it’s the closest thing Hux can bring himself to saying he loves him. Even then, it was a quiet admission, an acceptance of defeat, of surrender.</p>
<hr/><p>They’re back in Mos Eisley, the place where this whole ill-fated affair started years ago. Officially they’re both there on ‘business’. Ren may have hated him, but even he knew that Hux was the best chance they had at brokering the deal, and Poe can justify the stop for the night as he’s still at four hyperspeed jumps until his destination even if he’s certain he can make it in half that, three at the maximum.</p><p>Tatooine was closer to Republic space than he usually went. The risks were too great, and the chances of getting caught too high. In truth, Armitage hated it because it was in the Arkanis sector, and the stars were close enough to the ones of his childhood that he could recognize them all. </p><p>Armitage Hux would say that he could not see constellations. It would be a lie. Although very few people would ever know that fact. His mother, but she had been dead for years, some long abandoned, unmarked place on Arkanis, like so many others. Maratelle, because she and his mother had spent most of the clear nights gazing towards the heavens with him and explaining the stories behind the designs. </p><p>There was a beauty in the stars that he had always loved. A power in the way they burned and bled, and it’s the sort of beauty that never seems as bright after they died. Maratelle and Eloise had shaped the way he looked at it, and after they had died… such childish things were hardly tolerated. (He had loved them in all the ways he knew how at five, and then they were gone, and the constellations fractured evermore). There was no need for pretty designs when he could rule the cosmos with nothing but names and positions, Brendol had made certain of that fact.</p><p>Of course, then he’d met Poe all those years ago... Poe who had talked exhaustedly for hours about the sky above Yavin 4, and how stunning they were from the cockpit of an A-wing in his mother’s lap. Who could- did compare the burning passion of a star to his mother's embrace. Of the funny childhood desire to be one among them, to waltz with them in some endless, beautiful cosmic dance. (He had never wanted to one with them like Poe. He had wanted to swallow- devour stars— whole universes whole. (And in all honesty, <i>that</i> was a lie too)). </p><p>They hadn’t talked about themselves like that in years, a decade or more now, not since they’d both been young, and living in a world not yet war-torn again. They don’t talk anymore, because if they talk, it makes it real in a way Hux still finds ways to excuse. He’s not Hux as much as he is Armitage in these moments. Sometimes, they exchange words in the morning, and the nights always start with the familiar script of flirting, but it’s never serious. He’s not certain what he would do if it were. The war, the sides... this had always been a bad idea but they’re both here in the same bar and at some point the bad decision had become just a little bit easier to swallow.</p>
<hr/><p>Marattelle Hux wasn’t a good mother, she wasn’t even a good replacement for one. But she was better than Brendol, and he can still remember being a child, young and not quite desperately hungry for the cosmos, with her pointed and sharp form of love, as she took a comb and pulled his hair back, and gelled it into place so he could go up in front of officers that his father wanted to impress. (It was one of those nights that he first met Pryde).</p><p>He didn’t look anything like her, not like Eloise who he knew he looked like. Maratelle was stunning, and he’s certain, she must have been absolutely breathtaking when she had married Brendol, but a decade of being his wife and living in a divided galaxy had made some of that youthful elegance harder to see. Armitage remembers her best with her wavy silver hair wavy pulled back in elaborate styles, like the characters in old holonovels. (He’s older now than she had ever been, older than Eloise had been. Maratelle had been the older of the two, but even he had passed that point almost two years ago).</p><p>Maratelle has never been a weak woman, even at her lowest, she had been strong. But her name... her name had always reminded him of the stained glass of so many of the buildings on Arkanis; sad blues, and greys, and misty greens. (She had been important to him once, she had mattered, and now the colours are lost, like Eloise, and like so many of the others that had been there when the planet was sieged).</p><p>The morning is bright, the double suns of Tatooine cascading through the half closed blinds, and he can feel Poe stirring beside him. He wants to stay in bed with the other man. Poe had never been safe-- he’d been an assured death if anyone ever found out, but for all the light mocking, and the joking comm to buy the Resistance some time, he’d never been cruel and it was something Armitage found himself lacking more often than not now.</p><p>Armitage shifts to look over at the rest of the room, and he notices the pilot’s jacket thrown on top of the small desk provided, his own civvy coat a foot away. It’s an impulsive decision, but he’d rather this, than Pryde or Ren finding it. From the pocket of his coat he grabs a necklace of Arkanisian pearls-- the only thing he’d had of either Maratelle or Eloise to remember them by. (He remembers getting them, Maratelle had come into the kitchen in a flurry of motion, and unclasped the blue pearls necklace, placing it in his hand with a watery smile and an order to go with his father. He never saw either of them again).</p><p>He slips the string of pearls into Poe’s pocket. The small, silver spheres separating each one of the blue pearls, still reflecting the light like they had thirty years ago. (As a child part of him had always thought it was made of trapped moonlight, the colour identical to the appearance of the moon on the water during the few clear nights). Pearl- the word, even now carried the same blue opalescent that the necklace had.</p><p>He doubts that Poe will recognize the significance of the gesture; but some half desperate, hopeful part of him wants him to see the meanings: I’m sorry, I love you, when the war is over, I’ll live forever in the rain. Because Armitage knew, doubtlessly now, that he would not live to see the end of the war. If the Resistance didn’t kill him, Ren, or Pryde would, and part of him hated it. All his work, and everything he'd done, all for nought.</p>
<hr/><p>The next time, Armitage finds Shara Bey’s ring tucked in his coat, and he’s not certain if Poe understood. But he takes it as it’s meant. (They never say they love each other, but he keeps the ring beside his heart, nestled between the dog tags he'll truly be able to let go off). </p><p>It’s enough.</p>
<hr/><p>He makes it back to the Finalizer alive, and that is more shocking than anything else from the excursion to Mos Eisely. (He still reaches to roll the pearls between his fingers like a rosary, but pulls back every time he feels nothing).</p><p>He’s exhausted; the nights had been long, and the days had been longer. Ren had invented the ‘Allegiant General’ to outrank him, but he feels like he’s had nothing but more work since. If he was a weaker man, he might have bowed under the pressure by now, but even Hux feels like his ribs are cracking, and his spine is breaking under the weight of it all.</p><p>There’s a pile of datapads on his desk that he needs to get to-- all of them marked urgent. (To go with the pile he had finished today he was certain). For just a moment he almost wants to act on the suicidal plot to leave, but he doesn’t, instead Hux just leans back in the chair, stretching his arms, and closing his eyes. </p><p>He’d spent the better part of the last three years living on caf and stims, and except for the nights spent with Dameron, he can’t remember the last fully restful cycle he’s had. (Even this one isn’t, he’s three hours into the allotted eight hour rest cycle already). </p><p>He stands, and instead of reaching for another cup of caf, he brews a cup of tarine tea, the familiar motions calming in their simplicity. He takes out a fine bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for that oft-dreamed of promotion that was never going to come now. </p><p>The cup ends up half tea, half whiskey and the burn is more pleasurable than he cares to analyze. He’d dimmed the lights, and the couch he’d settled on was more comfortable than the desk. When the first cup is drained, he makes another, until the bottle is empty, and he only has two tea bags left.</p>
<hr/><p>The first time he ever wound up in bed with Poe, had been little more than a mistake. They’d both been in Mos Eisley for ‘business’ in the same way they had been a hundred other times after. It had been the wrong choice, and he’s still not certain that it’s one he can bring himself to regret. They’re not on Mos Eisley this time, which is partially shocking, and mostly boring. Part of Armitage feels like it should be, some last minute poetic irony, because there’s something about this that seems final in a way that the others nights never had been. Tensions running a little too high, the knowledge of what was at stake a little too prevalent. </p><p>They both knew too much to let this go. Pryde was building another Death Star (as if the first two, and Starkiller hadn't all been failure’s). And if he said anything he’d have crossed the line to courting death, to a sure charge of treason, but at the same time… what more allegiance was there to give. He’d given all he was, and the colours bled in all the same shades he did. At the same time, he didn’t think that he could let Poe go into the fight with no idea. (Either he betrayed himself, or the Order, and perhaps this was the heroes fate that he was certain he would never get, Pryde would execute him, but at least it wouldn’t be a victory for him and Ren).</p><p>The small room was barely more than a bed, and it was smaller than even most of the small rooms they had had over the years. It was swimming with echoes of the dilemmas that Armitage was facing. Burgundy for the Death Star, and crimson for the second, the same sickening purple of Starkiller that it had always, and the pale blue shades of the pearls he’d left with Poe last time.</p><p>Poe’s colours had shifted for the first time in a  decade, the green smoke screened with guilt, and ‘Poe’ was… warring. The once peaceful fire of now fighting for dominance. (Orange was victor in one moment, red was the majority in another). He hadn’t cared to examine his own name to see how it had mutated.</p><p>The pattern of the night hadn’t changed, but morning came too early to offer solace or comfort to Armitage’s still twisted morality. He blinked awake, manufactured station lights illuminating all the dust that covered the room. Poe was up which surprised him. In all the years they’d done this, he could count on one hand the number of times he had found himself waking up after Poe. (He slept light, a lifetime of caution and danger taught you that it was safer than letting yourself rest deeply). </p><p>He sat up, thin sheets pooling at his waist, as he looked at Poe who was pulling on his boot on the end of the bed. “I’m pretty sure we’re past sneaking out in the middle of the night.” he mused, and watched as the pilot flinched, swinging himself backwards to stare at his bed partner, he ignored the part of him that said that he’d done the exact same thing.</p><p>Poe let out a slight huff of laughter, in the way you did when you weren’t sure what to say. “I don't know Hugs, it might be mid-day, the moon never changes here you know.” Neither of them mention the last time he did, and Armitage is greatful, the jokes are easy- routine, scripted even.</p><p>(Armitage almost laughed, the bar they’d found each other in had been called La Lune, a joke, he assumed, considering the closest thing the station had to a moon was the phases of space junk that flew by). </p><p>The room quieted again. Hux distracted himself by looking out the sliver of window, and Poe toyed with a loose thread near his thigh.</p><p>“The Order is making another Death Star…” Armitage admitted quietly, a small part of mind yelling obscenities for betraying everything he’d ever known.</p><p>“Your ide-”</p><p>“Not… mine. Allegiant General Pryde’s.” he said, with a noticeable twinge of disdain in the way he used Pryde’s title. </p><p>“Oh..” And with that, the room lapsed back into silence-- an uncomfortable cross between awkward and contemplative. “You could come with me.” Poe offered after a minute, and this time it was Armitage’s turn to scoff. </p><p>“And what?” </p><p>“You could help us you know, do the right thing. Can you honestly say you like being with the Order?”</p><p>And that was… a bigger question than he wanted to answer. It was all he had ever known, but at the same time, between Pryde and Ren, it had stopped being about bringing Order and become something different. He didn't; believe in them, and the longer he was there, the less he was starting to believe that he was dedicated to the cause it had become. </p><p>The Republic would hardly be better though. That much… the words still scratched in long swooping gashes- and for all the terrible colours that he had always known of, hope was poison. (The message of Hope had brought the Republic to Arkanis-- had killed his mother, and Maratelle. Brendol had extinguished any hope he may have had). He was the Starkiller, with his devoured galaxies-- it was all he knew how to be.</p><p>“I’m going to die either way, why let your <i>fair</i> Republic execute me?”</p><p>“They might not, you know. If you came willingly they would have clemency.”</p><p>“Stand trial in front of a jury of New Republic senators to be judged guilty of my crimes? I think not.” They may have pardoned Imperials thirty years ago, but that had by no means been because of mercy, and even if it had been, there would be none for him.</p><p>“Some people might speak on your behalf.”</p><p>“Would you?”</p><p>The question rang in the air like a phaser blast, and they both lingered for a minute in the aftermath. </p><p>“I don’t know, Hugs, you killed a lot of people.”</p><p>He almost wants to be surprised. It would be easier if he was, for both of them. It would mean they could leave whatever this <i>thing</i> was there. Cut those left over ties to each other and he could go back to the Order with only a half-guilty conscience. It’s never that easy, and this is no exception. </p><p>There was no love, or promises, real people were never so blessedly lucky. (He thinks that his mother would have liked Poe). He can’t even blame Poe for it, it’s inconvenient but not unreasonable.</p><p>They both remain for another minute before Poe leaves without turning back. There’s a stack of credit chips on the edge of the bed.</p><p>It’s not until he gets back to the Finalizer that he realizes what Poe had done in the time before he woke up. The ring he had worn as long as they had known each other is resting in the pocket that Maratelle’s necklace had been for thirty years.</p><p>They never meet on Mos Eisley again, and Armitage wonders if it would make his mother proud. He likes to think it would.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For those of you who were curious, the working title of this fic was The Monstrosity, so like... I hope you enjoyed it!</p><p>Bonus points to anyone that picks up on how it ends.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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